


we could turn the world to gold

by mosaicofhearts



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Airports, Dancing, First Kiss, Fix-It, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Recreational Drug Use, Yearning, happy birthday lynne!!, sometimes when you can't find the words you have to act instead :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:01:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosaicofhearts/pseuds/mosaicofhearts
Summary: "Right, right." He purses his lips, knowing he can't get out of this conversation if Eddie actually wants to have it. He opens his mouth to say something helpful, but what actually comes out is: "- what if I came to New York next weekend?"He has this problem, see, where his mouth says things his mind hasn't caught up with yet. He's contemplating cracking his head on the sharp corner of the marble topped kitchen island in the quiet that follows his batshit crazy offering, but then Eddie is humming like he's thinking about it."Yeah," he says. "Yeah, no, that would be good.""It would?""Yeah? What, are you changing your mind already? Don't be a dick. You justoffered.""No. I'm not changing my mind," Richie says, absolutely changing his mind. "I can do that."
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 20
Kudos: 292





	we could turn the world to gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beverlymarshian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beverlymarshian/gifts).



> happy birthday to lynne ([@beverlymarshian](https://twitter.com/beverlymarshian)), who likes post-canon getting together :')
> 
> please shower her with love, and go and read all of her fics! she gifts us consistently, so this time this one is for her.
> 
> title from 'run away with my by carly rae jepsen' for reasons.
> 
> cw for canon-typical mentions of attempted suicide (Stan, but he's alive!!), and recreational drug use (eddie and richie get high).

“I’m just saying,” Richie switches the phone from his right hand to his left so that he can flip his beautifully browning pancake. 

If pancake making was a sport, he’d be in the top ten in the world without a doubt, if he does say so himself. “- if it came down to it, a bear could kill a shark. A bear could maul the _fuck_ out of a shark.”

The high-pitched sound of utter disgust that greets his ear from the other end of the phone is delightful and precisely what he’s looking for. A grin spreads across his face, entertained and ridiculously fond, and he’s absent-minded in his pancake making now, robotic in the way he transfers pancake to plate, attention gripped elsewhere easily. 

Thirteen year old Eddie was a helluva distraction for thirteen year old Richie, but that is still nothing compared to the distraction that _forty_ year old Eddie provides.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eddie hisses down the line, voice characteristically loud and aggressive in a way that only Richie knows to take for happiness.

Five weeks, three days and approximately ten hours. Give or take. That’s been the length of time that has passed since they traipsed their sorry asses to Derry and back, dropping everything in their lives for a call from an old friend. 

In the beginning, Richie had thought he might be angry at Mike for calling them back, that he might blame him for everything that happened thereafter - because even before he had arrived, even before he had been reminded about the demon bitch clown from space who had terrorised them as kids (and would again as adults, one last time), he had known that whatever was going to happen in Derry wouldn’t be good. Call it intuition. Call it paranoia. Whatever the fuck it was, Richie had known. But he’d still gone anyway, because hearing the voice of Mike Hanlon after twenty seven fucking years had been the best thing to happen to him for - well, twenty seven fucking years, probably.

It had been, once he’d recovered from the shock enough to think about it anyway. He’s still a little bitter that Mike led him to fuck up that show in front of the entire world, but he’s getting over that, bit by bit. It was bound to happen eventually, for a screw up like him. He’d bitched about it. Steve had bitched about it. But he’s alive, so like, that kind of overshadows the whole ‘breakdown on stage thing’. 

At least now things are actually looking better rather than worse. There may or may not be a Netflix deal in his not so distant future, and Steve’s already gotten over the fact that Richie came out via tweet without telling him (mostly) - so. All things considered, Richie’s doing well for perhaps the first time in his entire goddamn life.

He doesn’t let his return to Derry take credit for this. Because fuck Derry, basically.

But.

There’s always a but, isn’t there? In his life, there’s always a but. 

“A bear would not kill a shark,” Eddie is saying. His voice has taken on that lightning speed pace it always travelled at when they were kids and he was getting over excited about something, when he was really getting riled up and couldn’t seem to stop himself.

Richie was always probing for that reaction. Eddie at a hundred miles a minute was spectacular to behold, like a shooting star. No, like an asteroid - beautiful in the moments before disaster.

Richie would quite happily be caught up in the disaster, if it meant he got to see Eddie at his brightest beforehand.

Usually, the ‘disaster’ was something like: Richie being punched in the arm by Eddie; Richie being kicked in the ribs by Eddie; Richie being shoved off his bike by Eddie. _Touch_. Never gentle, but always desired.

He imagines Eddie now, pacing around the small, box-like lounge area of his newly rented apartment, socked feet scuffing against the laminate floors. The phone cradled between his neck and his shoulder, pressed so tightly against his ear that it might glow luminous pink for hours after they finally hang up the call. Hands twitching at his side, searching for something - reaching for Richie, if he was there. To pinch at his bicep, or tug at his hair, or tread on his toes.

But he’s not there.

He is here, in Chicago, and Eddie is miles away in New York. And that’s fine. That’s how things were before and it’s how things are now, and Richie knows he’s crazy for even wanting anything different. Nothing has changed since they were kids, he knows. He’s still Richie, aching to have Eddie’s eyes and hands and attention on him, and Eddie is still Eddie, valiantly putting up with all the bullshit Richie has to offer for God knows what reason. Richie could never work it out then - beats him if he’s gonna work it out _now_.

“Do you know how many teeth a shark has, Richie? Richie?” Eddie demands, each word sounding increasingly more irritated than the last. “Richie? Are you even listening to me right now? You’re so fucking rude, do you know that? Jackass, I’m gonna-”

“Gonna what?” Richie queries; can’t help himself. He tips some more of the pancake mixture into the pan, overzealous with the twist of his wrist. It’ll be a big pancake. He eyes the plate already stacked too high for one person and winces. “What are you gonna do, Eds?”

 _Come all the way from New York to Chicago just to beat your ass_.

That’s what he wants to hear. He’s always had an overactive imagination. He’s flashed back to five years old, Maggie Tozier at the stove in their old family home in Derry, cooking dinner and listening to Richie regale her with a story about child snatchers prowling the streets of Maine (like _fuck_ , was he fucking prophetic or what?). 

“ _Don’t lose that mind of yours, Richard, will you?_ ” she’d said, smile soft at the edges as she brushed through his unruly hair with her fingers. “ _It’ll take you far. It’s special_.”

It has not ‘taken him far’ at all. If anything, all it has brought him is cruel daydreams and disappointment. His fingers flex automatically around the handle of the pan, grip painfully tight when it realigns. 

“I’ll hang up on you.”

The laugh that bubbles in Richie’s chest has an edge of delirium to it. “No you won’t.”

Eddie won’t. Richie knows Eddie won’t because _Richie_ wouldn’t. 

It’s been five weeks, three days and approximately ten hours since Derry, and in that time, Richie can’t count the number of text messages, Facetimes and phone calls he’s exchanged with the rest of the Losers. Eddie probably could. He probably keeps a little spreadsheet of all the data, typing in each and every time they all interact, because he’s a neurotic little bastard and maybe he finds it comforting. It is comforting. Richie is the type to be comforted by the constant presence of others in his life now. 

He sighs, rubbing at his forehead as though he can chase away the budding migraine he can feel there with touch alone. 

“No, I won’t,” Eddie agrees with a sigh.

It makes Richie’s heart skip a beat in his chest. It’s hardly the confession he had always dreamed of being on the receiving end of as a kid, but it’s something. It’s enough. It has to be enough.

The meat of the issue is that it’s never going to be enough. Richie knows this. Having Eddie back in his life after twenty seven years of feeling like he was missing an arm or a leg or his entire heart and soul is brilliant, it’s wonderful, it’s the best thing Richie could have hoped for. But there’s a difference between having Eddie back and _having Eddie back_.

A big difference. He can’t put it into words yet, at least not aloud, not to anyone else. Ben would look at him with those awful sad eyes and Bev would purse her lips like she already knows and Mike would try to give him horribly earnest advice that Richie absolutely would not take, and it would be another embarrassment to add to the long list of them he’s been compiling for years.

The thought makes his tongue feel too heavy for his mouth, acrid nausea settling beneath the muscle.

“So,” he says conversationally, adding another pancake to the pile. 

There’s only one more left, judging from the amount of mixture in the bowl. The phone call will come to an end after he’s done, because Eddie will somehow _know_ he’s done and make him leave to go and eat, and Richie already knows he’s going to drag this last pancake out because of who he is as a person.

Which is to say, he’s a little bit pathetic where Eddie is concerned.

Exhaling loudly, he continues, “Talk to me about the sharks, Eds. How many teeth do they have? Wait, let me guess - fifty thousand. Imagine getting a hickey from one of those bastards -”

\---

The weeks following Derry continue to pass Richie by, time moving strangely around him. It feels almost like he’s waiting for something, which is stupid because as far as he can tell, there isn’t anything happening in his life that should make him feel this way.

This isn’t surprising. Dissecting his reasons for feeling a certain way has never been his strong suit.

He asks Steve about it, once or twice. Lets him read out his calendar to him over speakerphone, frown deepening as each notable event or appointment or interview is voiced and none of them seem to be what he’s looking for. 

Steve, he thinks, is just delighted that Richie seems to be taking an interest in the planning side of things for the first time in their long, frustrated business relationship. Richie feels too bad to tell him that he doesn’t give a shit that he’s appearing on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show, or whatever the hell it is, so he keeps his mouth shut for the most part. It’s a difficult feat; he manages.

Limbo. That’s what it feels like - he’s in limbo.

Given that everything in his life actually seems to be on an incline now, Richie figures he probably doesn’t have any right to feel this way. It should be relief that he gets to enjoy the rest of his life never having the worry niggling at the back of his head that something isn’t right, that he’s got his memories back and he won’t be forgetting them again - unless he gets, like, fucking dementia or something, which would be really fucking something, wouldn’t it? Like, of all the shit luck in the world, that would be the cherry on top of a very, very shitty cake.

Coming out felt good. Nausea-inducing and wet your pants terrifying, but good, when all was said and done. 

The Losers had been first, before he’d tweeted about it, because he knew that he couldn’t not tell them. He couldn’t let them find out that way, even if he’s sure that at least half of them knew before anyway. Insightful bastards. It is a very strange thing to be known after an entire lifetime of feeling completely _unknowable_.

But he’d told all of them in a group chat because he didn’t want to do it on camera and have to look at his own dog-tired face and shaking hands when he did it. And maybe he hadn’t wanted to be able to see their faces either. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to see Eddie’s face. Because as much as it was easy to convince himself that they wouldn’t give a flying fuck, it was just as easy to convince himself that they would.

They hadn’t, obviously. Stupid, he thinks, for thinking that it could be an issue.

Eddie had called him after. It had been late - some time past eleven pm, so even later for Eddie. And that was how Richie had known it was important, because Eddie gives himself a strict bedtime and has done since they were kids. Every time they’d come together for a sleepover, Eddie would be in bed by 9pm at the latest, scowling and swearing at them whenever they kept him up with their stupid ass talking. Richie specifically had taken great joy in keeping him awake as long as possible, usually resulting in earning himself a bruised arm for his efforts.

So, he’d known. Eddie was calling for a reason.

He’d still let the phone ring a few seconds too long.

Probability was Eddie’s realm of knowledge, but it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out why he would be calling at that time, on that day. Just a few hours after Richie had dropped the bomb of the big, fat G word in the chat, expecting it to implode and hoping that it wouldn’t. He hadn’t checked his phone for a few hours, but when he had there had just been messages upon messages of love and support from the Losers, an outpouring of affection that had made him wet eyed and dry mouthed.

By the time Eddie had called, Richie had only just stopped crying, embarrassingly. He has learned a lot about himself over the years. The fact that he is a crier is not breaking news to him.

He’d answered with trembling fingers and a voice inside his head telling him to _get a grip_ and a sinking sensation in his stomach telling him that this was going to be the moment that Eddie shunned him. Or worse, the moment that Eddie told him that he knew what the repercussions of Richie being gay meant in relation to him, specifically.

None of that had happened, because Eddie is a certain type of jackass, but he’s not _that_ type of jackass.

Eddie’s voice had been a mile a minute down the line from the get go, sounding to Richie’s fearful ears half proud and half annoyed: when did you know? Why didn’t you tell me? We were best fucking friends, asshole, what’s your problem! 

And then, quieter, with a softness that Richie had almost forgotten that Eddie was capable of: I’m glad you told me - us. I’m proud of you. We’re all so proud of you. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved. You always did. We love you, Rich.

His head, being practically entirely separate from his body, thought to change the word ‘we’ to ‘I’, adding salt to a wound reopened after many years. He could almost kid himself that it meant something more, whilst berating himself for needing it to be something more. He could never be satisfied with the _just’s_ and that has always been his number one problem. Depending on who you ask. Some people, for example, would suggest that his number one problem is his proficiency for filthy jokes about acts he’s never participated in, or his sometimes worrisome semi-dependency on alcohol.

This is a _just_ that he is adamant he will be okay with, because the collective love of the Losers? That’s still fucking special. Takes a lot to get used to.

Bizarrely, the loneliness is absolutely suffocating now. 

It should be the other way round, he knows. He was lonely before, but there was a numbness to it. You don’t find yourself perfectly alone for twenty seven years and not build up some sort of resistance to actually feeling it; the first few years after Derry had been the hardest. Twenty year old Richie standing in a room full of people in a city a hundred times the capacity of his small hometown, yet he couldn’t have felt more isolated if he was in fucking Antarctica.

Over the years, it got easier to deal with. He had Steve, and there was always something more than professional there, even though Richie still kept him at arm's length - something about his dark brows and big eyes and his mouth that Richie imagined would taste like disappointment had left Richie unsettled, even after he’d hired him for those exact reasons.

He understands now. It turns out he’s even more of a walking fucking cliche than anybody ever thought.

So. The loneliness before, that was manageable. Almost comfortable, in a weird, twisted sort of way. He was used to spending his nights alone drinking and reading over the new material that had been written for him, the jokes about pussy and girlfriends and cheating washing over him without any effect where they’d once made him feel hot with shame. It was - it was just life. He’d never made any real friends and it was too late for him to start.

Derry changed that. Derry changed a lot of things, but especially that.

Knowing, after all this time, that he _had_ had people once. That this found family had found one another once again, against all the odds. 

It’s the knowing that’s the problem, he thinks. Because he knows now that the losers exist, and he knows that they care for him, and he knows that he cares for them, too. There’s no end to the amount he cares for them. His care is a bottomless pit, which feels _insane_ , because he’s not given a shit about much in life as far as he can tell. Or at least he’s never acted like it. It’s not quite the same thing, but it’s close enough.

(All of this is connected, but he’s not a therapist so he’s not going to self-analyse).

The loneliness comes into play, he thinks, when he considers the distance between them all still.

He’s found them. Selfishly, he wants them with him. To go from nothing to everything like that gives him whiplash - it’s not something he’s used to. 

He doesn’t even think about it before he takes his phone out, and that’s another thing - he doesn’t think about it. It’s automatic now. He’s got his phone attached to his body at all times, just in case one of them calls or texts or the group chat lights up like it’s the fourth of July, because he can’t bear the thought of missing anything.

It’s second nature too because he’s used to being the one starting the conversation. Not usually anything important - the coming out conversation is about as much seriousness as he can handle right now, so everything else is off the cards. He sends bird memes to Stan, keeps ribbing Bill about his bad endings, asks Mike for more photos of sunsets wherever the hell he is at any given time - Richie’s lost track at this stage. Mike seems to pop up in another state, another city, every other day. It’s like he hit the road and hasn’t been able to stop running yet. Richie gets it. He’d get it even more if he’d been stuck in _Derry_ , so, it’s fine. He’s a little jealous.

His thumb tracks over the screen as he skips past contact names that he can barely put a face to, hovering over Bill for a moment, before deciding against it. Bill’s in London still, with Audra. Filming or something. Richie doesn’t actually know what it is Bill’s doing in London, but he’s there, probably acting like a real tourist and checking out all the sights. Richie blows a raspberry. Working out the time difference seems too complicated, so he moves on, pausing a few more times, before he presses call.

“Richie! You do know I’m not Eddie, right?”

“You’re hilarious, Haystack,” Richie lies through his teeth. Ben isn’t hilarious. Everyone else is a bad influence on Ben. “I don’t expect this shit from you.”

“Right, sorry,” Ben says. He does actually sound apologetic, enough so that Richie figures he’ll give him a chance before hanging up.

Out of all their friends, Ben’s likely to be the least irritating. Although, Richie is learning that he does have his moments.

“What can I do for you?”

Richie frowns a little. “Do I need an excuse to call you? Can’t I just wanna hear your voice, Hanscom? It’s a sexy voice. I’m only human.”

“I think there are special kinds of phone lines for that, Rich,” Ben says, and Richie can hear the blush in his voice, can picture how red he must be already. It’s endearing. Ben was always the most endearing of them. Eddie was adorable, but rabid. Ben’s never been rabid in his life. “Do you want me to Google for you?”

He has an urge to push and prod and make Ben rabid. He doesn’t think he’ll be successful. 

“I wouldn’t let you besmirch your search history like that, don’t worry.”

“Thanks. I don’t want to have to explain that to anybody.”

“Like Bev?”

“No,” Ben says too quickly. “Just. Anybody.”

“I think she’d be into it,” Richie grins, wheedling despite himself, poking at the big red button in front of him like he always does. 

Not always, actually. 70% of the time now, if he had to hazard a guess. He knows when to stop, is the point. He knows when enough is enough. It took him awhile and a few black eyes to figure it out, but he got there in the end. That’s what counts, he’s sure.

Ben sighs down the line, something deep and long-suffering. “I’ll be sure to ask her. How are you doing?”

Straight to the point. A group of seven, but Ben’s always the one to ask how you are first. Richie should have taken this into consideration when choosing from the sudden newfound pile of friends he has to contact, but it’s not often that he stops and thinks for even a few minutes, so he thinks he can cut himself some slack, probably.

“Fine,” he says, tone jaunty. A little _too_ jaunty, probably. Overboard with the cheeriness. Ben’ll be too polite to point it out if he notices, at least. “Perfect. Brilliant. Spectacular. Never been better.”

Yeah, that’s definitely laying it on thick. He has to physically bite his own tongue to stop himself from throwing more words out there.

“That’s great,” Ben sounds like he’s smiling. “I’m happy for ya, Rich.”

He is, too, the bastard. A lot of people in Richie’s life would like to see him fail, but not Ben Hanscom by the sounds of it.

“Yeah,” he hums, flicking through one of the many unread books on his coffee table. He’d bought them a few months ago on a whim, telling himself he was going to focus on wellness and shit. Well. There’s always next year. “What about you? No redhead babies running around yet?”

“Richie, we’re taking it slow. You know this.”

“What’s that got to do with redhead babies?”

“Richie.”

“I think you can take it slow _and_ have sex. But what do I know?” Richie cajoles, grinning despite himself. “I thought you’d be at it like rabbits by now. Do you not want to tap that? I know you want to tap that.”

“Don’t talk about Bev like that,” Ben says mildly; pleasantly, even. “You know she’s been going through a lot with the divorce… we’re staying friends.”

The ‘for now’ goes unspoken, but Richie hears it anyway, and his grin maybe turns a little fond and a little soft. Fuck it. He’s allowed to be a secret romantic when it comes to his friends. Ben was a close second when it came to pining after someone seemingly unattainable back then… at least one of them is doing something about it.

At least one of them _can_ do something about it.

“Yeah… how’s that going?”

Ben sighs. “Fine, I think. Well, not fine - you know, it’s difficult. He’s not exactly going easy on her. But she’s keeping her spirits up. You should ask her yourself.”

Richie winces. He could and he should, but the idea also makes him cringe inwardly with the fact that he has no idea what he’s supposed to say or do in this sort of scenario. He loves Bev. He cares about her a fuckton. But breaching the topic of her painful divorce from her piece of shit husband - it’s not something he knows how to do. He’d fuck it up, somehow. Say the wrong thing and put his foot right in the trap door and wind up apologising for it for the rest of his life, weighed down by guilt over that stupid as shit thing he said when he was forty and his friend needed him.

He’d rather put his head through a window than have to talk about _feelings_ right now, and if he and Bev start talking about her feelings eventually they’ll come around to _his_ feelings, because everyone except the person in question seems to know that Richie’s insides are all twisted up and have been since - oh, forever, probably.

Since the first time he’d laid eyes on Eddie Kaspbrak in the playground and decided he was going to force his friendship onto him by way of smart ass comments and insults.

“Maybe,” he replies noncommittally, knowing that Ben will read it as a ‘no’. It’s better than outright lying. “She’s a tough cookie. She’ll be fine.”

It sounds false to his own ears, and his squinty eye twitches at the way the words come out. _Tough cookie_. She’s more than that, always has been, and being tough doesn’t mean that you can’t always be vulnerable. He knows this. Knowing what to say, though? Another thing altogether.

“Yeah, she will. How’s Eddie doing, anyway?”

“Still short,” Richie says. “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

“Because,” Ben laughs down the line, not a hint of malice there. Still, Richie feels like he’s been cornered. “ _You’re_ the one who’s always talking to him. Can barely get a word in edgeways… just like when we were kids.”

His voice has taken on a misty tone towards the end there. Richie gets it. He could lose himself in the world of their childhood memories pre clown all day if he let himself. But it’s also as agonising as being shot in the heart with a hundred sharpened arrows, so he’d rather not.

“He’s fine,” he shrugs, eyes skimming over the pages of the book he’s definitely not reading again. “He’s Eddie.”

“And the divorce?”

His fingers twitch across the glossy pages, splayed out like his hand has just had a spasm that the rest of his body wasn’t invited to. He stares at it for a moment, turning the word over in his head as he tries to summon a response.

Right. Eddie’s divorce.

He knows about it, obviously - though Eddie doesn’t say much on the matter, not in the group chat or when they talk privately, and Richie is willing to let him keep it that way. He’s not a pusher. He’s a waiter. He waits for people to come to him. It’s much easier that way, without him having to worry about overstepping.

He thinks he’d wait his whole life for Eddie, if he has to.

Anyway, the point is, Richie has been purposely ignoring the fact that Eddie is getting a divorce because - well. Because _what_ , exactly? He doesn’t know. Or, he does know, but he just doesn’t want to admit it, because that would open up a whole can of worms he isn’t willing to address quite yet.

A can of hope would be more apt. Like, if Eddie’s divorcing his wife, a small, treacherous, distant part of Richie’s mind says: maybe this is it. You could have a chance. He doesn’t want to be with his wife. He won’t be with her. This is your opportunity. Tell him how you feel.

Which is fucking _stupid_ , because the main thing to take away from the fact that Eddie is divorcing his wife is that he has a fucking _wife_ in the first place.

So, there’s no hope. There isn’t an iota of hope. Richie wishes that tiny part of his brain would catch up to the fact, because it’s _tormenting him_. What the fuck is he supposed to do with it?

“We don’t really talk about that,” he says, wincing at the honesty, catching the pad of his forefinger on the corner of the pages and closing his eyes as blood swells from the thin cut. Fuck. That’s going to stain. Eddie would know what to do, but Eddie isn’t here. “But he sounds okay.”

That’s not the truth. On the last few occasions that he has spoken to Eddie on the phone, Richie hasn’t been convinced that either of them are ‘okay’.

But he also doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do about that.

“Good,” Ben sounds relieved. “He’s so quiet about it… I hope he knows he can talk to us.”

“He does. The ole trauma club is back together again,” Richie forces a laugh. “Us against the world and all that.”

Ben is entirely sincere when he says, “Yeah. Us against the world,” and it makes Richie’s heart do a somersault in his chest that feels impossibly sore.

By the time the call ends, the loneliness doesn’t feel quite so stifling. 

This universe - a universe where they have all survived and come out of the other side together- is a lot better than any other universe Richie could have conjured up. He isn’t convinced he’s _not_ dreaming all of this, but his dreams would include a lot more Eddie and a lot less clothes and a lot of icky, disgustingly romantic feelings and Eddie’s total acceptance of all of that.

So. He’s not dreaming. He is here, in Chicago, alive and well, and he has all his friends back in his life, and there’s not much else he could want in the world.

Except Eddie Kaspbrak. He’s pretty sure he’ll never stop wanting Eddie Kaspbrak.

\---

“I know you know how to use a phone. Get your head in the frame, dumbass.”

There it is. Richie grins as he moves into position, phone held in his hand with the front facing camera on. 

They’re only about two seconds into this week's Facetime and Eddie’s already annoyed at him - it’s a record. It’s a personal best. Richie’s incredibly proud of himself, grin widening to the point that he thinks it might actually split his face when he looks at Eddie’s expression, at those ridiculous dark brows pulled together in the middle, his lips twisted in irritation and still very, very kissable. 

Damn.

He pulls his gaze up guilty. Eddie hasn’t noticed - of course he hasn’t noticed - but Richie still feels his stomach swoop with nausea like he’s been caught. Growing up gay in a town like Derry does that to a person, even when they’re out and they know they’re accepted; he has all the scars to prove it.

“You just want to admire my handsome face,” Richie says. “I can’t blame you, but you’re gonna have to join the queue. It’s $50 for a photo, $300 for a personalised video message. I’ll put you in touch with my agent.”

He’s almost positive he hears Eddie growl.

“Nobody’s gonna pay that much for a photo of your mug,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. “Unless they want to put it on a dart board. Actually,” he grins smugly. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Pressing a hand to his chest, Richie pouts exaggeratedly at the camera. It doesn’t have half the effect as Eddie and his fucking doe eyes, but he figures it’s the effort that counts. “You wound me. Eds, my love, how could you break my heart so cruelly?”

The look Eddie shoots him is pure judgement. “You’ll survive."

He really thinks too highly of Richie. 

“Are you cooking?”

When he looks back at the screen, Eddie is leaning forward in the camera, eyes squinting like he’s trying to get a better view. His tee shirt is old and loose, in juxtaposition to the fitted, expensive looking shirts he usually seems to favor. The material hangs further down around his neck, stretched out like someone much larger may have worn it before Eddie. That hint of skin makes Richie’s mouth water. The thought of the tee shirt belonging to someone else causes him to lose his vision momentarily.

Again, he forces himself to tear his eyes away, jovially waving towards the stove.

“I am. I’d offer you some, but… distance and shit. Wouldn’t travel well in the post.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said you could cook,” Eddie leans back, looking vaguely impressed. Either that, or Richie’s projecting. “I thought you were kidding.”

“Nope,” Richie flashes him a smile, ignoring the beating of his heart at the expression that Eddie wears - it’s almost assessing, the way he’s looking at him. “I’m, like, a fuckin’ pro, man. I have a spice rack and everything!”

He’s proud of his spice rack. It’s taken him a few months to fill it, getting a few different bottles every time he goes to the grocery store, trying flavors he hasn’t before. Actually, the kitchen is probably the most respectable place in his house. Aside from the bedroom, it’s where he spends most of his time when he’s at home, so he puts effort into making it look good. Now, with Eddie having at least a partial view of the room on the camera, he’s feeling very vindicated in doing so.

He has some of his shit together. Like, a tenth of his shit together. He may not act like it, but he does.

“Oh, a _spice rack_ ,” Eddie sounds like he’s mocking him, but Richie can see the interest in his eyes, clear as day. 

_Ha_. It’s incredibly satisfying, and he feels himself preening beneath the attention.

“Can you cook?”

“Yes.”

Richie narrows his eyes. “That couldn’t have sounded more like a lie if you’d tried.”

Eddie frowns. “I can cook.”

“What can you cook?”

“Pasta. And things.”

“‘And things’,” Richie scoffs, laughing as he strains the liquid from the pasta that _he_ is currently making. “Extremely technical language there. Very believable. I’m completely sold.”

“Fuck you. I can cook. I just don’t.”

Ah. Yeah. The wife.

Immediately, Richie feels his mood blacken, which he knows is unfair. It’s not Eddie’s fault that Richie is in love with him and any mention of his marriage - no matter how vague - is enough to have him practically frothing at the mouth and wanting to bite someone in an incredibly unsexy way. He contemplates using the fork to stab himself in the eye. Much less painful. But gorier. Eddie would probably kill him for making him a witness to such a violent act.

He decides against it.

“Well, it’s never too late to learn,” he says, shrugging and keeping his tone as balanced as he can manage, which is difficult when he’s thinking of biting Eddie’s wife. Ex-wife. _Soon to be_ ex-wife.

Eddie surprises him then. “I guess I’ll have to start, huh?”

Because Richie didn’t _lie_ when he told Ben that they don’t talk about this. They don’t. Categorically, the only time Eddie’s divorce has ever come up was when he announced it in the group chat, and that doesn’t even count as far as Richie can tell because it wasn’t a private conversation. 

“Hm, seems like it,” he purposely does not look at the screen. “I’m going to tell Bev you let your wife cook for you all this time. It’s 2017, man. We’re all feminists now.”

“I’m a feminist!” Eddie splutters.

“Oh yeah? Name one of their books.”

“That doesn’t even - shut the fuck up, you’re so annoying.”

Richie snorts, tension releasing from his shoulders minutely. When he chances a glance at the screen, Eddie is red in the face and glaring like he thinks he’s Scott Summers and has the ability to liquidise Richie with his eyeballs.

He’s not that far off the mark.

“How do you think I made my career?” He adopts the most smug grin in his repertoire because Eddie will hate it.

“I’d hardly call it a career before,” Eddie pulls a face. “You’re much better off now.”

Ah, sincerity. Richie doesn’t know what to do with it, especially when it comes from Eddie.

He’s learning a lot about Eddie - about all of the Losers, really - and the ways in which they have changed as much as they are the same. Eddie at forty is much more prone to sincerity than Eddie at thirteen. Richie’s still figuring out how to handle that (which is to say, currently, he handles it badly).

As if to prove his own point, Richie flourishes his ladle exaggeratedly, splattering pasta sauce everywhere. “Disagree. I have so much more work to do now. I used to just stand there and look pretty. I think I’ll have to hire writers again.”

“Don’t you dare,” Eddie points his finger directly at the camera.

It’s adorable that he thinks he’s intimidating. Regardless, it has the usual effect of making Richie weak at the knees and ten seconds from dropping to the floor and announcing he’ll do whatever Eddie says for the rest of his life, please.

He grips the edge of the counter to ensure that he doesn’t actually do that.

“I’ve watched your old shit,” Eddie says. “You fucking sucked.”

“You didn’t tell me you were a fan,” Richie says.

“Did you just hear me?” Eddie demands. “I said you sucked. I wasn’t a fan. I’m not a fan.”

Humming, Richie shrugs, getting up close to the screen so that his face takes up the entirety of it. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“Who the fuck are you calling a lady?”

“Take it up with Shakespeare,” Richie says.

Eddie groans, dropping his head into his hands. Richie lets his gaze linger over the slope of his narrow back, the wings of his shoulders flexing with the force of his apparent exasperation. He stops just in time for Eddie to look up.

“The fact that this _isn’t_ the most exhausting conversation I’ve had this week is troubling,” Eddie says sadly.

Richie contemplates stalling the conversation because it feels like it is going down a rocky road that he’s not sure he wants to travel. It would be selfish, he thinks. He doesn’t even know how he would, anyway. Distract Eddie with another tangent? He could talk for America, but not now.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He winces away from the camera. Eddie doesn’t need to see that this is painful for him.

“No.”

The instant relief is followed by a sickening guilt.

“Do you want to not talk about it?” he tries.

Eddie looks at him like he has two heads, and then sighs, “I don’t know what I want.”

Story of my life, Richie thinks and very nearly says.

Instead, he moves the pot of pasta onto a cold hob, folding his arms across his chest when he gets back in front of his phone. Eddie is looking at him like he thinks Richie might have all the answers. Considering he knows Richie, this would be laughable if Richie didn’t feel so ill suddenly.

“Are we talking about your wife here, man?” He swallows, voice far weaker than he would have liked. “I gotta tell you, I think you’d be better off talking to Bev about this. Or Stan. Or Mike.” Anyone but him, essentially.

"No," Eddie says. Vehemently. Seriously, there's enough force to his voice that Richie has to pause and blink at him.

Apparently seeing Richie's expression, Eddie frowns, shaking his head. "I mean - no. I know what I want with... that. Or what I don't want, I guess."

Presumably the wife being what he doesn't want.

She has a name. She is an entire person, made of atoms like Richie himself. But he can't bring himself to name her, not even in his own head. He wonders if Eddie has noticed this throughout their communications lately, then decides he doesn't want to know either way.

"Okay," He says slowly. "That's good? Well... done?"

He's a disaster of a human being. He turns away from the camera so that Eddie cannot see the full blown grimace on his face, before turning back. Eddie is squinting at him like he can't quite work out what Richie's aim is here. _Richie_ doesn't even know what his aim is, so he can't blame him for that.

"I don't know what to say," he blurts too honestly instead. "But, like. I'm proud of you. For doing what you want to do. You don't have to have everything else figured out, man." He waves his hands around, then down at himself, lip curling. "I mean, look at the rest of us. None of us have anything figured out."

"Yeah, no shit," Eddie snorts. "You don't even have an excuse. You're not going through a divorce."

"There were many a mare that wanted to marry me," Richie says sagely. "But I am not a steed that can be tamed. I had to break more hearts than I could fix."

Eddie's laughter is genuine in a way that is insulting, almost. But Richie can't bring himself to be overly bothered by that, because he hasn't heard Eddie laugh like this in a few weeks - and he gets to witness it, too. He moves closer to the screen robotically, like he absolutely _needs_ to get a better view, eyes tracing the pixelated version of Eddie's face and committing this to memory. His eyes, way too fucking big for his face and now creased at the corners with absolute joy. His lips, making up for the largeness of his eyes by being ridiculously small, peeled back over his teeth. His laugh, loud and delighted and _annoying_ , except it's not annoying to Richie. It could be the best sound in the world, to Richie.

He doesn't think that Eddie is sad, per se, but over the course of their many, many phone calls and Facetimes, he has noted Eddie bearing resemblance to a kicked puppy on more than one occasion. Endearing, sure, but also troubling.

Eventually, Eddie manages to cease laughing to issue an offensive comment to Richie instead. "Yeah, you're a real fucking lady killer, Rich."

Sarcasm drips from every word.

Richie isn't really insulted, because that would be stupid. He's not even interested in women, which everyone is well aware of now. But it's the _principle_ of the thing.

"Like you're any better," he rolls his eyes and puffs his chest out exaggeratedly. "Clearly you can't keep a lady either."

It's the wrong thing to say. He knows it before he finishes saying it, but the words leave him regardless, and he's left watching as Eddie's face all but caves in on itself. All traces of the previous joy that lined his features just a few moments before disappears in the blink of an eye. Desperately, Richie clutches at the side of the laptop screen like he can bring Eddie back.

It feels bizarrely similar to being down in the sewers in Derry, clinging to Eddie's lifeless body and praying to a God that he didn't believe in that the man he still loved, impossibly, after all this time, could be saved.

God listened. Or Eddie had never been that close to death. Either way, Richie hadn't lost him, and he'd felt very, very embarrassed about his reactions when Eddie had woken up, grumpy and disgruntled in a hospital bed, sore but otherwise okay, just a few days later.

Luckily, Eddie hadn't remembered a single thing.

Now, Richie spies his own terrified eyes in his reflection and swallows against a rebellious throat. "I didn't mean that."

"I know," Eddie replies quickly. "It's fine." But he isn't looking Richie in the eyes.

He's looking off screen, downwards. Richie can't tell what he's looking at exactly. Whatever it is is out of view of the camera. Probably, it's just the desk, or his own lap, something he can focus on as he tries not to lose his shit in front of Richie. Richie gets it.

"No, really. I didn't."

"It's _okay-"_

"Eds," Richie tries again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"You shouldn't say a lot of things," Eddie smiles, tiny and crooked, a mirrored line forming in Richie's own heart. "But you do anyway. What's changed now?"

 _You_ , Richie wants to say but doesn't. _Derry_ , he wants to say but doesn't. _I saw you die_ , he wants to say but doesn't.

"I've decided to stop being an ass," he says, flippant. "It's tough going. Real hard work. My therapist thinks it's impossible, but I'll show her."

"She's right."

"You're supposed to be supportive, what the fuck? We're friends, Eddie. Best friends."

"You want me to lie to you? I can't support something I don't believe in."

The rapport is quick and easy and they sink back into it. The niggling feeling at the back of Richie's mind still feels like guilt, and Eddie's eyes don't have quite the amount of life they had had before, but it's progress.

He feels like he's stepping on eggshells a lot of the time these days. He never really felt like that when they were kids, but it makes sense. They're older now; different. They don't really know each other like they did back then, even though Richie is also sure that Eddie knows him better than anyone else, still.

It can be both things at once. It's a head fuck, but it is.

They talk back and forth for a little while longer.

Richie returns to his cooking and Eddie returns to his watching. Eddie likes to watch, Richie finds. It shouldn't surprise him, but it does. He feels both comfortable and completely at a loss beneath the weight of Eddie's gaze. It makes him want to crawl out of his fucking skin, the sensation of it itching across the surface of his body, but it also makes him want to bask in it. What's all that about? Why can't his body just pick one and stick to it? It's like wanting to jump off a cliff and changing your mind at the last minute; you either fall into the water or the rocks below anyway, or you manage to cling onto the cliff side and stop yourself. Either way, you're pretty fucked.

"I have a meeting next week."

Richie's dishing up his pasta when Eddie says this. It doesn't register at first what he means by that, but then he puts two and two together and gets to four or five, he doesn't know which straight away.

"Brilliant. Are you finally getting that surgery on your head? What is it again, a brain transplant? Happy for you."

"My divorce, Richie," Eddie glares at him. "It's a divorce meeting."

"That doesn't sound very fun. Do they have refreshments?"

"Richie."

"Right, right." He purses his lips, knowing he can't get out of this conversation if Eddie actually wants to have it. He opens his mouth to say something helpful, but what actually comes out is: "- what if I came to New York next weekend?"

He has this problem, see, where his mouth says things his mind hasn't caught up with yet. He's contemplating cracking his head on the sharp corner of the marble topped kitchen island in the quiet that follows his batshit crazy offering, but then Eddie is humming like he's _thinking_ about it.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, no, that would be good."

"It would?"

"Yeah? What, are you changing your mind already? Don't be a dick. You _just_ offered."

"No. I'm not changing my mind," Richie says, absolutely changing his mind. "I can do that."

Eddie rolls his eyes and huffs. "Well, I fucking hope so, it was your idea."

"Okay. I'll book flights, then."

"Okay, good."

The way Eddie is looking at him down the camera is jarring. There's that competitive glint to his eye that Richie is entirely used to seeing. It feels a little like Eddie is looking into Richie's very soul, and that's an absolutely horrifying thought. His soul probably isn't that pretty. He's got a lot of shit to pay back. He's doing his best.

"Good," he blurts.

Another roll of eyes.

"Your face will get stuck like that."

"And it would still be better than yours," Eddie's response is swift and snippy, but he smiles.

It means he wants Richie to get the plane tickets. He pulls out his phone and buys them right then and there.

\---

The first thing Richie does when he touches down in New York and has Eddie in his sight is touch the ground and profess, loudly, "New York. I am in you".

Eddie is not impressed. Neither are 85% of the passers by, but Richie did not expect anything less from the sort of people who idolise the fuck out of New York. He says as much to Eddie, who punches him full force in the middle of his bicep, which is his version of a hug. It feels like coming home, even with the pigeons and the people who elbow past them without apologising, because _fuck_ New York.

Eddie's apartment turns out to be the exact box that Richie conjured up in his mind, because, again, _fuck_ New York. There's only one bedroom and a couch that looks like it will crack his spine in the wrong way, but given the fact that the one bedroom thing makes his ears burn, he knows he's going to willingly throw himself down onto that rockbed of a sofa tonight.

It's minimalist, and not just in the sense that it's small. There isn't much of anything going on here. No artwork. One lone cactus in the corner of the lounge that looks like it's seen better days (and honestly, Richie didn't know you could fuck up a cactus, but apparently you can because Eddie _has_ ). No framed photos.

Too late he recognises that this is clearly because any photos Eddie might have had would have been with his wife.

"It's nice," he says lamely, after turning in the same spot five times in a row.

Eddie brushes past him roughly. "No, it's not."

"Yeah, you're right," Richie agrees. "It's very... white.

"Groundbreaking," Eddie says. "You're a real linguist."

"Oh, sorry. It's clinical. Is that better?"

"No? What the fuck?"

It _is_ clinical though, is the thing. He's been here for a few months now, Richie is sure, but the place looks barely lived in. It looks like a show home - the sort of apartment that people have viewings in before it's actually sold or leased out.

It's kind of depressing. At least Richie has, like, a collection of vinyls in the corner of his room (ranging from Fleetwood Mac to Miley Cyrus), and some vaguely interesting pieces of art that mean very little, but look very eclectic.

"So," Richie digs his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "What's the plan, Eddie-oh?"

Eddie shoots him a pointed look. "You want to see New York?"

"Absolutely not," Richie grins. "Couldn't think of anything worse."

"New York is fucking great, you don't know what you're missing."

"I almost got shat on by a rat of the sky on my way over here. I'm okay."

"Why are you acting like you don't have pigeons in Chicago? You have fucking pigeons in Chicago."

Richie shrugs. "Your pigeons are worse."

He moves over to sit on the couch, wincing at the way it digs into his bony ass. It's an expensive looking thing, so obviously it's uncomfortable. From the moment he'd seen the Gucci loafers in Derry, he should have known that Eddie Kaspbrak would be a pretentious little dick now. He loves him.

Richie senses Eddie's discomfort, like he's concerned about Richie being here in his apartment. It makes him feel more nervous in turn, drumming his fingers along his thighs and not looking at Eddie, even though all he wants to do is look at Eddie. He feels all at once settled and restless to be back in his company. He wants to be closer. He wants to be miles away, back in Chicago, with a safe distance between them. His love is a ticking time bomb, and Richie might spend the rest of his life trying to disarm it before it explodes into tiny, fragmented pieces of himself.

He pats the empty seat of the couch beside him - not overtly so. A small movement. It would be easy to miss, or easy to ignore. His way of saying 'no pressure, but I'd like you to be right here if you would want that too'. He wants to feel the warmth of Eddie's body next to his, because his own feels much better, much softer, when it's next to Eddie's.

"I bought weed," Eddie says, doing a phenomenal job of pulling Richie away from his pathetic thoughts. He looks twitchy, stood up but eyeing the sofa where Richie's hand still lies, until he pulls it away and back onto his thigh.

"Uh," Richie says. He looks between his hands and Eddie. "You - have you ever even smoked before?"

"Yes," Eddie growls and then sits beside Richie. 

He leaves a reasonable and polite amount of space between them. Not space enough for a human being. Space enough for a dog, maybe, but Richie doesn't have one and he doesn't think Eddie does, either. At least, he hasn't seen any evidence of it.

Swallowing, he looks away from the space, and up to Eddie. "I knew you'd rebel when you went to college."

"I didn't _rebel_. I smoked some weed."

"How long since you last smoked?"

"Twenty."

"Months?"

"...years."

Richie guffaws, throwing his head back at the volcanic nature of the laughter. "Jesus _Christ_ , Eds. Is this how you're gonna spend your single life?"

Eddie hits him with a cushion. "Fuck off. I just want to fucking relax, is that so bad?"

No. It's not.

Richie looks at the purpling bruises beneath Eddie's eyes and the taut stretch of his skin over the bird bones of his wrist. He was never delicate, but he's always been compact. Small. He feels the inexplicable urge to curl his fingers around that wrist, to see if his fingers meet.

"Nah. I think you're allowed to smoke a truckload of weed after-" almost dying, "- fighting a clown and getting a divorce from your mom."

"My-" Eddie splutters, rearing up on his knees on the sofa. "What the fuck did you just say, Tozier? What the fuck was that? What's your fucking problem?"

"I googled her, man," Richie holds his hands up in surrender. "She could be your mom's sister."

Richie dodges the second cushion, just barely, but then Eddie picks up the remote control for the television and he has to physically escape the room.

\---

After, when Richie has apologised not in words but in offers to cook for the entire weekend, and Eddie has finally decided that he will start speaking to Richie again on this basis instead of throwing things in his direction whenever he so much as peaked into the lounge, Richie makes good on his promise.

For someone who does not cook that often, by self admittance, Eddie has a fully stocked kitchen. Habit, he says, when Richie asks him, and his cheeks redden in a way that makes Richie's heart flip. He wants to push it but he doesn't.

Looking through the cupboards, he comes to an assumption that seems plausible pretty quickly anyway.

There are a lot of foods in Eddie's kitchen that Richie knows, without a doubt, he would never have consumed as a child, or a teenager, or potentially even when he was in his early twenties, though the assumption is more tenuous at this point. Because Richie doesn't know who Eddie was when he was twenty years old - but he thinks that Eddie would have been closer to the Eddie he knew than the Eddie he knows now.

He keeps his findings to himself because, one, he doesn't want to get a knife thrown at his head this time and he absolutely would not put it past Eddie, who has a remarkable arm for someone who has never played sports in his life. And, two, he doesn't want to think about Sonia Kaspbrak, and he doubts that Eddie wants to, either.

In the end, he makes them a mild chili, surprised and pleased at the fact that Eddie just nods and shrugs when he suggests it. It isn't a test, not really, but maybe Richie is pushing the boundaries a little. Trying to figure out how much this Eddie has grown.

Judging by the things he already knows and the things he is learning now, he thinks that he has grown quite a bit.

Which makes sense, because they’re all old now. Richie hadn’t thought he’d see thirty, let alone forty, but the last few months have made him glad he has. It helps that anyone looking at them from the outside would not pin Richie down as the one having a mid life crisis. Historically, he _has_ been the one people assume is having a crisis - quarter life, or third life, or no life at all crises. But, well, he has two friends who are going through a divorce, another that seems to be on the brink of it, and one who has decided gallivanting around the world at his big age is a sensible thing to do.

The only one doing better than he is, if only on the outside, is Stan. And that’s not even true considering he tried to off himself rather than returning to Derry, only to survive and return to Derry anyway.

At least his marriage is intact. At least someone loves him. Richie isn’t some twenty year old incel who hates the world because someone won’t fuck him, and he isn’t a thirty five year old who watches romantic comedies and cries because he’s old and alone, but it would be nice to have someone who loves him.

Eddie wolfs down his portion of chilli in a way that makes Richie think he hasn’t had a home-cooked meal since he left his wife and started going it alone, and then he looks at Richie from across the table expectantly.

Richie looks back.

Eddie widens his eyes and then narrows them.

Richie raises an eyebrow.

On cue, Eddie breathes out through his nose loudly. His nostrils flare impossibly large. “Are we gonna smoke or what?”

“I don’t know, man,” Richie stirs the last mouthful of rice around the bowl, unsure that he wants to eat it. “Are we?”

“I asked you first.”

“It’s your weed.”

Eddie says, “Well, I want to.”

Richie says, “Didn’t your mom ever tell you you can’t always get what you want?” But he slides a lighter across the table anyway.

“What the fuck,” Eddie blinks at it. “Why do you have that?”

“I don’t know,” Richie replies truthfully. “Picked it up from somewhere.”

“What else do you have in your pockets you just ‘picked up from somewhere’?”

He knows that tone of voice. It’s slightly incredulous and vastly judgmental, reminiscent of many memories he has of the two of them, now that he can actually remember.

Digging his hands into his pockets, he pulls out some paraphernalia. A clean handkerchief that is definitely not his, because he doesn’t fucking own handkerchief’s, what is he? British? A small pen that he might have stolen from a bank. A collection of foreign coins which, considering he hasn’t left the country in the last 12 months as far as he’s aware, is vaguely concerning. The wrinkled foil of a condom wrapper. Unused. A leaf, which Eddie spares one disgusted glance, before looking back at the condom wrapper.

“You carry around condoms?”

“No,” Richie says, horrifyingly, like he wants to humiliate himself further. “I brought it specifically because I knew I was coming here to see you.”

The sun streams in from the window to the left of the kitchen slash dining room slash lounge. It’s golden orange, just starting to burn out as it begins to sink behind the horizon, and it bathes Eddie’s face in warm hues. Eddie stares at him with very little discerning features to his expression, which is disconcerting and makes Richie want to squirm in his seat, so he does. If Richie didn’t know Eddie’s eyes like he does, he wouldn’t believe for one second that they could be the window to the soul.

“Your face,” Richie groans, a sound that is halfway a laugh, breaking the silence. “Jesus. I’m kidding, obviously. Aren’t you all about being responsible? You should be proud of me. This-” he taps the condom wrapper. “- is the sole reason there aren’t any baby Richie’s running around.”

Eddie’s face creases in what could be amusement but could also be pain. “You’d have to actually have sex with a women for that be remotely true.”

“What? Really? Why the fuck am I paying child support to a guy in Denver, then?”

Eddie kicks him in the shin under the table and then gets up and moves over to the couch without saying anything, taking the lighter with him. Richie understands it to mean that he wants him to follow, so he does, after rubbing at the abused skin of his leg.

The weed, it turns out, has been stashed under the coffee table next to the sofa the entire time. Eddie bends at the waist to reach for it, leaning forward with his shirt riding up at the back. It’s human nature that draws Richie’s there. He looks at the dimples towards the base of Eddie’s spine, one on each side, perfectly mirroring the other, and he resists the urge to do something reckless like lick them. He has some level of self preservation skills about him.

Eddie shoves the little bag of green and the filter paper towards him. “Roll.”

“Why are you assuming I know how to?”

The look Eddie gives him could curdle milk.

He takes the paper and the weed and he rolls a perfectly adequate joint, holding it up between his forefinger and thumb for Eddie to inspect. It passes the quality check, apparently, because Eddie takes it from him and swipes his tongue across the paper to close it, unaware as to the effect that this simple, incredibly sexy action has on Richie. Which is to say, Richie has to grab a cushion and place it over his lap preemptively and Eddie doesn’t notice at all. He has never wanted to be a piece of filter paper more in his entire life.

Richie wants to ask Eddie if he’s okay. He thinks he should. He thinks that, if he were Stan or Bill or Ben, he would, because that’s the kind of thing that they do. They’re good at it. He wants to tell Eddie that he cares and not just because he’s in love with him and has been since they were kids, but because they’re best friends and he’d still care for Eddie if he didn’t have those feelings at all.

In the end, he just lets Eddie close his lips around the end of the joint, cupping his hands as Richie leans in close and lights it for him. He thinks maybe it says everything anyway.

\---

Somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half later, they have migrated to the floor. It is more comfortable than the sofa, and Richie tells Eddie as much. The fact that Eddie doesn’t complain or deny it says a lot. 

After a few minutes more of sitting on the floor, Eddie slides down onto his back, slow as molasses, like it takes a lot of effort but also no effort at all. Richie watches him, tilting his head to the side. Eddie’s eyes are unfocused when they meet his. He wishes it could be blamed on something other than the weed; a feeling, a chemical imbalance different to that created artificially, but he knows better.

“I don’t think I ever loved her,” Eddie says, matter of factly.

His voice is slower and quieter like this.

Richie thinks it over. 

“I’m sure you did,” he says, because he decides that’s the sort of thing he’s supposed to say. Right? It makes sense that he should reassure Eddie that he loved his wife at some point or other, because the alternative is worse, Richie thinks.

Eddie shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. Not like… not like I love you guys, you know?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Richie says, weakly. “It’s - there’re different kinds of love, man.”

Eddie hums.

He continues to hum for a few moments. Long enough that Richie thinks he agrees, or that he’s at least going to let the conversation die.

Instead, he speaks up again.

“I think you’re wrong. I think it is the same thing. This time, anyway.”

The air is permeated with the sickly sweet scent of the joint they’ve been smoking between them, taking their time. Richie could blame the lightheadedness on that. He doesn’t mind being a liar if it means saving his own skin. But nobody is asking. It’s just him, in his own head, thinking about how Eddie looks now - his eyes droopy, his mouth slanted in a half smile, the wrinkles lining his face reminding Richie time and time again that this isn’t the Eddie he once knew, but it’s still the Eddie he loves.

His fingers itch. He wishes they still had the joint, but it was put out a while ago. He tugs at the hem of his own shirt instead.

“Maybe,” he mumbles around lips that feel suddenly numb. He bruises the skin there with his own teeth, before he gets up onto his feet in a rush. “You got a radio?”

From the floor, Eddie twists his head around at a peculiar angle. “What? No.”

“What the fuck? Who doesn’t have a radio?”

“I don’t have anything, asshole. Look around.”

Eddie doesn’t sound sad, or even irritated, so Richie continues in his task of pulling his phone out of his pocket.

A person’s music catalogue says a lot about them. He skips past a hundred songs before coming to rest on one familiar tune.

“No,” Eddie gasps, sitting upright.

“Yes,” Richie says. He reaches out a hand towards Eddie without thinking.

It looks like Eddie doesn’t think either before he takes it. The idea of what that could mean sends electricity shooting through his skull, and he closes his eyes against it momentarily.

“We used to listen to this,” Eddie says, standing now but not really doing anything. His hand is still in Richie’s. “When we were kids. In the clubhouse.”

They hadn’t danced back then. Richie doesn’t think either of them would have dared. Now, though, it’s almost too easy to use the hand that’s entangled with Eddie’s to tug him into his side gently, Eddie moving without restraint. Willingly.

It’s not quite slow dancing. It’s not really a song to slow dance too, but they try anyway.

It’s Richie’s hand on Eddie’s waist and the other refusing to let go of his hand, and it’s Eddie stepping closer into Richie’s space and not pulling away.

It’s dark in the lounge now, the golden hum of the corner lamp the only light provided. It could be romantic, but Eddie keeps treading on Richie’s toes, and Richie keeps moving them a little too roughly.

By the time the song ends, the final notes of _Purple Rain_ fading into nothingness, they are almost chest to chest. Richie imagines that Eddie might feel his heartbeat, hammering away. Would Eddie believe him? If he asked and Richie blamed it on the weed, on the dancing, on the happiness?

“I’m glad you’re here,” Eddie breaks the silence. His breath ghosts across Richie’s lips. “I’m glad you came.”

“Eds, my love. Whenever you call.”

Eddie doesn’t start at the nickname. He just smiles and smiles and Richie wonders if a smile can break a heart. It certainly feels like it.

They dance a little longer, until Eddie is proclaiming it is time for bed, and Richie panics about the situation for a few seconds before Eddie makes him drag the mattress off his bed into the living room.

Richie stands over it, hands on hips. “Really?”

“Really,” Eddie nods, already sliding under the sheets of their makeshift bed.

It’s a tight squeeze. If there was little space between them on the couch before, there’s no space to be found here. Richie holds himself stiff against Eddie’s back, trying not to think about the possibilities. How it would feel to fold himself around Eddie like a permanent second skin. How it would feel to have Eddie breathe against the soft skin of his throat. He’s overcome with the desire to move and the fear that wages war inside him. 

In the end, it’s Eddie who reaches back with an exasperated sound and tugs at Richie’s arm until it’s curved over his waist. Richie is tense for a few moments before. He doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath until it physically burns his chest and he has to open his mouth and inhale.

“Eds?” He says. He should question this. He makes an effort too, even as he lets himself relax, his arm an anchor around Eddie’s body. Chest to back, toe to toe, squeezed onto his mattress on the floor of his lounge room. If he had the chance, he’d do this every night for the rest of his life.

“Hm?”

The response is sleepy. A soft sound caught in the back of his throat.

Richie breathes out. 

“Nothing,” he murmurs. “Go to sleep.”

“Trying to,” Eddie mumbles. “Dickhead.”

Richie pinches his side, because he can. His head buzzes with the fact that he can, that Eddie has basically given him permission to touch. He pulls the blankets up around them, wondering if they’ll smell like him after this, wondering if Eddie will wash them as soon as Richie is gone, or if he will sleep in them alone until the scent is more Eddie than Richie again. Will he miss it, when Richie is gone, when even his scent can’t linger anymore?

He is pretty fucking relieved that this is just one night, but he wishes it was forever, too.

\---

The next morning Richie leaves Eddie in New York and returns to Chicago. He loves Chicago. It’s his home. More of a home than Derry ever was. But when he touches down, the sky looks as grey as his mood, and he’s already lamenting that he’s away from Eddie. It’s not fair. He refuses to start waxing poetic about the shit hole that is New York because Eddie is there, but the pigeons don’t seem so bad from hundreds of miles away.

It would help if anyone was in the vicinity, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? He got his family back but he doesn’t _have_ his family back.

He refuses to make small talk with the Uber driver on the way home from the airport, and feels bad enough about it to leave the guy a 5 star review, even though he didn’t have snacks and he didn’t ask Richie how he was. It’s fine. Richie wouldn’t have asked Richie how he was either, if he saw him looking anything like he did in the reflection of the rearview mirror.

He dumps his suitcase in his room without emptying it, gets some chips from the cupboard, and sets up base on the (much more comfortable but far less exciting) sofa in his lounge.

Then, he Facetimes Bill. He gets another look at his reflection in the tiny camera in the corner of the screen before Bill answers and wishes he had text instead, but it’s too late because Bill is answering and he isn’t alone.

Richie squints. “What the fuck? Where are you?”

“LA,” Mike answers for them, grinning like he’s the luckiest man in the world. “I got here a few days ago.”

“And I just got back from London,” Bill finishes.

“You look like shit,” Mike says.

“Yeah, I thought you were seeing Eddie? Why do you look like that?”

“Fuck you both, I’m hanging up,” Richie says, and then doesn’t. “A night with Eddie is enough to make anyone pull their hair out, you should know this.”

They make twin sounds of neither agreement or disagreement.

“Did you _just_ get back? Like, now?” Mike squints.

“No. My plane landed an hour ago.”

Bill blinks. “And you’re calling me…? Why?”

“Because we’re fucking friends, Billiam. Or I thought we were. You’re on thin ice right now. I might have to demote you.”

“You already have,” Bill says easily. He’s distracted by something Mike is doing off screen. “Eddie’s your favorite.”

“Eddie was always his favorite.” Richie can’t see Mike now, but his voice sounds smug.

“Not true,” Richie frowns. “Bill was my favourite for, like, a week once.”

“Hm,” Mike says. “Was that before or after he punched you in the face?”

“After. That was actually the moment I promoted him. It was hot as shit.”

Bill looks vaguely pleased. “Really?”

“No,” Richie frowns more. “Not really. You weren’t my type.”

“Well, we all know that…” Bill mutters.

Mike’s head appears again, shoved in to view next to Bill’s. “How _is_ Eddie?”

Choosing to ignore the fact that they jump from ‘not my type’ to ‘Eddie’ like it’s old news, Richie frowns, picking at a loose thread in his shirt. “Good. Fine. He seems like he’s doing well.”

It’s the usual answer, but he means it more this time. Eddie seemed sad when he left, but he wasn’t sad before that. A part of him thinks Eddie might have been sad _because_ he was leaving. Richie was sad. _Is_ sad. 

He sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Is he divorced yet?” Bill is way too fucking blase.

“Uh, no, pretty sure he’d tell us if he was.”

“These things take time,” Mike says, and he’s looking at Bill who looks back. Richie feels like he isn’t even there.

“I’m still here,” he says, to prove a point. He taps at the screen. “Hello. Me. Richie. Here.”

Bill frowns at him, but at least he’s looking at him now and not Mike. “Did he say anything?”

“Not really,” Richie lies, squirming. “I didn’t ask.”

Neither of them seem surprised. They don’t seem impressed, either, but he doesn’t think that’s fair of them. Asking someone directly about how their divorce is going seems a bit risky, to him. What was he supposed to say? ‘Hey, Eds, good to see you, how’s the worst year of your life going? Can you call her an ex wife officially yet?’ He shudders.

“I thought you were going to Atlanta,” he says to Mike.

At this point, he is almost certain that he sees Mike blushing.

“Change of plans,” he says with a smile, and Bill is smiling too, and Richie wants to excuse himself to throw up, but he smiles at them instead because he doesn’t have control over his body and apparently he thinks this is cute now.

They talk for a while longer, enough so that he stops thinking about Eddie for half an hour and instead thinks about how annoying Mike and Bill are, and also how much he loves them. He gets hungry halfway through and fixes himself some noodles while they watch and tell him how sexy of him it is that he can cook. He feels better, after.

Still, he sends Eddie a goodnight text before he crashes into bed without sorting through his suitcase first.

\---

Steve organises some dates for a new tour in the coming year, and Richie wrangles a weekend in New York. He texts Eddie about it immediately, which he refuses to look at too closely.

 **Richie:** i’ll be in your neck of the woods again :p

 **Eddie:** When? Soon?

 **Richie:** next year. maybe sooner.

It’s not a lie, per se. And if he is considering making up a random tour date in New York in the next month or so that doesn’t actually exist, nobody has to know about it except him. 

**Eddie:** The later the better.

 **Richie:** u don’t mean that.

 **Eddie:** I do.

Three seconds later, Richie is getting a call from Eddie, the screen lighting up with it when he’s in the middle of typing up a response.

“When?” Eddie demands as soon as he answers.

“I just told you,” Richie tries not to smile, pressing the phone to his ear. “Soon.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Next month,” Richie blows out his cheeks. “Probably.”

“Probably? Isn’t it, like, a definite thing if you’ve got a date agreed? It should be. If it’s not, you need to fire your agent.”

He sounds like a bitch, all snippy and snobby, and Richie loves him so much that it hurts.

“I’ll tell him he’s fired because you say so.”

“Good.” Eddie says. “Give him my number. Happy to answer any questions.”

Richie snorts, cracking open the can of beer he’s had out for five minutes already. “Will do.”

He thinks that Steve and Eddie meeting would be the worst possible thing in the entire world, clown included. He would also very much like to see it.

“Are you drinking?” Eddie asks, and then without waiting for an answer continues with, “I’m drinking.”

“Oh, I could tell,” Richie replies, even though he couldn’t.

“No, you couldn’t,” Eddie says, not willing to rise to it. “This is nice. It’s like we’re drinking together.”

“Uhhh,” Richie says. “How much have you had, again?”

He feels a little drunk himself, but he hasn’t actually had any alcohol, so that’s impossible. Probably. He doesn’t think you can get drunk off of beer fumes, but if there was ever a time to find out, it’s now.

“Fuck you,” Eddie’s voice is sweet despite the words. “My divorce is getting finalised.”

Unfortunately, Richie had chosen this exact moment to take a sip of his beer. He’s not proud when he spits it out, but it’s an involuntary action.

“Rich? Are you okay? Are you choking?”

“No,” Richie coughs through the lie, swiping at the now wet counter with his hand. “No, I’m fine.”

“Okay. Anyway. Next week. Just gotta sign.”

“Aw,” His voice is too soft, but he can’t do anything about that. “Dobby’s going to be a free elf.”

Eddie hangs up on him.

A few hours later, he sends Richie a selfie where his eyes are unfocused and his smile is fond and demands that Richie sends one in return. Richie does, because he is definitely a little drunk at that point, and then he spends the night rubbing his thumb over the cheek of selfie-Eddie on his phone.

\---

They text on a daily basis. An hourly basis, even. Richie does not go a minute without thinking about Eddie, which would be a problem if he wanted to do literally anything else.

The Losers group chat is always active, and then they have their solo messages just between themselves, and Richie manages to swallow down the oppressive loneliness he feels whenever he thinks about the fact that none of them are really in reaching distance of him by focusing on the fact that they are all alive and in his life now still. It’s unfair that they’re apart, but they are adults, and he’s not prepared to put his dignity on the line and directly confirm his dependency upon them even if they know it. It’s bad enough that he texts them multiple times a day; he’s not about to admit that he’d be happier if they all bought houses in the same city, in the same neighborhood and spent the rest of their lives there together.

He’s coping. He loves them. He loves Eddie differently, in a way that is unexpected but resigning. He had thought, for a moment, that because the Eddie he knew and the Eddie he now knows (and the Richie Eddie knew and the Richie he now knows) are different, that maybe he would grow out of this love. That, maybe, seeing Eddie at the Jade had been like touch memory for his brain. He remembered that he had loved him so he did, and maybe, when they’d had the chance to actually know one another again, he wouldn’t, anymore. He’d love Eddie a normal amount, in the right way.

Unfortunately, as always, he was very, very wrong about that.

Loving Eddie Kaspbrak is not something that Richie could ever stop. The proof is in the pudding, the pudding being his body, which reacts alternately like it’s been set on fire and doused in ice water whenever he and Eddie interact, and his mind which simultaneously wants him to push Eddie away and pull him closer.

Thinking that he could stop, for however short an amount of time, was foolish hubris and he’ll never be able to make the same mistake again.

Romance has been a transient concept in Richie’s life, if it has existed at all. Romance, to him, was more discrete blow jobs in bar bathrooms and furtive kisses that always made him feel disappointed; expecting more than what he ever got. It makes sense, really, that this is because he already belonged to someone else, had done since he was thirteen years old. It’s also incredibly fucked up, but Richie’s life has never been anything but, so. He can’t complain.

It doesn’t help that Eddie is keen to jump straight back into the seat of best friend.

A week after Richie says he might be coming to New York, Eddie texts him and says he might have to come to the Chicago branch of his firm for a few days. It feels like a lie. Richie can say this whole heartedly as a certified liar - it feels like the excuse that he himself had made, pretending that he would have a show when he wouldn’t.

The problem is that he knows why he said that. He doesn’t know why _Eddie_ says the thing about the Chicago office. Logically, he wants to see Richie. Which is cool, fine, brilliant - but Richie wonders why, exactly? Because they’re friends? Fucking duh. His mind wants to make something more of it though, no matter how much he berates himself for doing so.

Because Richie wants Eddie close and looking at him and around at all times, but that’s because he’s pathetically in love with him and always will be. It’s _different_. He wants Stan and Bev to be around, too, but he’s not going to make up excuses to see them. So why would Eddie?

He thinks about this, arguably, too much.

He thinks about _Eddie_ too much. Enough so that when he’s woken up at 3am on an early December night to the phone ringing. He’s more or less convinced himself that he’s still dreaming, and contemplating ignoring the mobile. Except it’s Eddie calling, even if it is his dream, so he’s obviously going to answer. Whatever. He’s pathetic. He’s known that for a while.

“Richie, Rich, is that you?”

The alarm in potentially dream-Eddie’s voice is startling enough that Richie sits upright in bed, the sheets pooling at his waist and the cool air of the apartment prickling at his skin.

Ultimately, this is what convinces him that maybe he isn’t still dreaming after all.

“Uh,” Richie says eloquently, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He’s seeing spots of color from the sudden wake up call. “Yes. That’s me. You called me. It’s me.”

“I know I did, dipshit, but that doesn’t mean that it’s you. You could have, like - a fucking boyfriend around or something.”

“I’d have to have a boyfriend for that,” Richie says, finding the thought comical. “I told you. I can’t be tied down. I’m born to roam wild and free.”

He hears Eddie’s scowl, somehow. Now he’s just thinking about being tied down by Eddie. Or lassoed by him, like a beautiful cow in a lush, green farm, willingly waiting for Eddie to make the move.

Probably, he needs more sleep.

“Whatever, I don’t know,” Eddie says, and then, “If I buy a plane ticket, can you pick me up from the airport? Chicago International, right? There’s a flight at 6am. I can probably make that.” He sounds like he’s talking to himself. He may as well be, considering Richie thinks his brain has liquidated and poured out of his ears. “Shit, I’m gonna have to pack. Like, now.”

When Richie doesn’t offer a response, he says, “Rich? Hello? Have you hung up on me? I’ll fucking -” 

“No! No, I’m here,” Physically, he is. He pinches his arm and winces at the burst of sore pain. “I - what’s going on?”

It’s a fair question, he thinks. Not one he can be blamed for, considering it’s just gone 3am and Eddie sounds like he’s being fucking hunted or something.

“Have you killed someone?” Richie asks, quite seriously. “If the FBI are after you, there’s nothing I can do, Kaspbrak. I can’t let you bring me down with you.”

“You’re already at the lowest depths possible, Richie, fuck you.”

“If you think that now, you should have seen me last year.”

“I did,” Eddie sighs. “You looked like shit. It was all over YouTube.”

Which, _ouch_ . Richie knows this but he doesn’t need to be reminded, what the fuck? Especially not at _3am_.

“Okay,” he frowns. “Did you call me to insult me or-?”

“I called you because I want to book a damn flight, how do you not get that!?”

And, look, Eddie sounds _irritated_ , which isn’t exactly breaking news, but Richie thinks he should cut him some slack here.

“Sorry,” he says, not feeling particularly sorry at all. “I don’t usually get 3am calls from friends asking if they can come and visit that day. I usually get at least twenty four hours notice.”

There’s a silence and he worries, for a moment, that he’s fucked up. He stews, wondering what he can say to fix it.

“You’re right, sorry. I just - I need to see your stupid fucking face, okay?”

Still mildly insulting, Richie notes, but it makes his heart clench and his stomach roll like there are hoards of butterflies in there, pushing against his ribcage and moving into all his internal organs. If he burps right now, a butterfly might actually come out.

“Eds.” He hates the way his voice sounds; plaintive, almost a whine to it. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t - I don’t know. I feel like I’m losing my mind and there’s so much going on and I just want to get out of here. You’re the first person I thought of.”

Somehow, Richie knows that that isn’t the entire truth. He can’t parse the lies from the honesty, because there’s a little bit of both mixed in, but he bites his tongue (literally) rather than pushing at it. Because he’s a good fucking friend, and if Eddie needs him to be that, he can be. He will be.

“Okay,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his tired face. “6am - that’s, what, 2 and a half hours on the flight? I’ll be at the airport for 8.30.”

Eddie makes a quiet sound of relief that is quickly followed by an aggressive, “Don’t be late.”

When the call ends, Richie stares at the cell phone in his hand for a few long, hard minutes, before throwing it across the bed and putting his face in his hands. He’s allowed to have a mini breakdown before Eddie arrives, he thinks, and there’s no fucking way he’ll be getting anymore sleep now.

\---

On the way to the airport, Richie contemplates turning around exactly five times, before he realises that would mean stranding Eddie at the airport and letting down the one person he’s never wanted to let down.

It’s the fear of the unknown talking. Not knowing exactly why Eddie wants to come to Chicago at the butt crack of dawn is terrifying, because Eddie is not the type to do anything on a whim, not even now. This is a fucking whim if Richie has ever seen one. Thinking back on their recent conversation, he wonders if he’s just somehow missed the signs that Eddie was - what, exactly? Struggling? In trouble?

The thought leaves his mouth dry. There’s a flare of hurt at his temples; like it’s his body’s way of telling him that Eddie’s pain is his pain too. It’s a ridiculous thought, but he puts his foot down on the gas anyway.

The airport at this time, in early December, is sparse and sleepy. A man snores peacefully in the corner of the arrivals lounge, and Richie looks at him almost longingly, thinking of his own broken sleep.

He’s early, for once, so he makes himself at home in the airport, settling on a chair to wait for the next half hour or so, however long it’ll take Eddie to get off the plane and grab his case and probably shout at some people along the way.

He’s thinking about coffee - bad airport coffee, specifically - when he sees the small rush of people coming through the gates and takes to his feet, nervously waiting towards the side, where he will be able to see Eddie, and where Eddie will be able to see him. His hands are itching. He shoves them into his pockets.

As it is, he doesn’t see Eddie. Eddie does see him, though.

The first inkling Richie has that Eddie is anywhere near his vicinity is a flash of colour as the smaller man barrels towards him at a speed that is, frankly, impressive. He thinks, wildly, that Eddie is going to shove him over or hit him or _something_ , in the split second he has that he can register that it _is_ Eddie coming towards him. Eddie is running like the clown is hot on his heels and he can’t get away fast enough.

He throws himself at Richie with reckless abandon, and Richie is thankful to his body for the first time for moving quicker than his mind, because he catches Eddie - arms flexing around him as Eddie goes practically head first into his chest. Mostly, he’s trying to steady him, bewildered by this turn of events, but then he realises that Eddie is _hugging_ him.

A real hug. The kind of hug Richie hasn’t experienced in - ever, maybe.

His arms wind around Richie’s waist, his head pressed into the width of his chest, and he’s shaking; Richie can feel that Eddie’s shaking. He thinks he might be too, but it’s definitely mostly Eddie, and the unadulterated joy that has sparked within him from being mauled like this by the love of his life is quickly dampened by the fear that something is incredibly, obviously wrong. 

“Uh,” Richie swallows. “Hey, bud… how are you doing?”

He hears Eddie sniffle, and _that_ is deeply concerning, but he just presses closer into Richie’s space, his arms tightening around his middle so much that Richie would be worried that he might actually bruise, if he wasn’t too busy trying to get a better look at Eddie’s face. The face which is still pressed into his torso. Eddie is being decidedly unhelpful on the ‘are you okay’ front.

The thing is - Eddie is holding him like he never wants to let go, and Richie’s heart is a hummingbird beating in his chest, and he wants this to be real and true, and he wants it to be so much more than what it is.

So. He stands there, inhaling Eddie’s scent, one hand gently, hesitantly, cradling the back of Eddie’s neck. Not holding him in place, but offering the only support he knows how. He lets Eddie stay there for what feels like a lifetime, and he memorises the feeling of Eddie’s chest pressed to his, of their bodies curled around one another protectively, of Eddie’s warmth that no other heat will ever be able to compete with.

Richie thinks he might be cold forever when they part. But they have to, eventually, and he decides that he’ll be the one to move first.

He pulls back, opening his mouth to ask Eddie if he’s okay, but he doesn’t manage to get the words out because Eddie is lunging at him for a second time.

This time he’s aiming for Richie’s mouth, evidently.

Aiming being the key word.

The angle isn’t right. Richie’s lips are already parted, and the force of Eddie propelling himself forward means that their teeth clack awkwardly and painfully, noses smushed together in a decidedly unsexy way.

“Ow,” Richie frowns. He tries to work out the probability that, when he answered the call earlier, he _was_ actually still dreaming, and now this is just a continuation of that dream. Which is fucking embarrassing actually - what, he can’t even get their first kiss right in his _head_? That’s fucked up. He deserves more.

The Eddie still in his arms inhales sharply, face falling as he starts to pull out of Richie’s grip, and Richie doesn’t want that. It’s the opposite of what he wants, always.

So he moves back in, because it’s so easy to do it, because it feels like the right thing to do. He throws caution to the wind. At the back of his mind, a voice asks him what he’s doing, scared and shrill, and he tells it to fuck off right before he presses his lips to Eddie’s.

It makes up for whatever the fuck that first attempt was.

Eddie sighs into his mouth and goes almost lax against him, save for the hand that flies up to the base of Richie’s neck. Fingers tangle into his hair, and it feels too good to be a dream, because obviously it’s not a fucking dream, but if he thinks about that for too long right now, he might actually panic and fuck it all up. Instead, Richie focuses his energies on pouring everything into the kiss that he can manage, the soft slide of their lips together the only thing he wants to think about.

Beneath his hands, Eddie feels alive. That same energy is vibrating through Richie’s entire body, his nerve endings alight with the sensation of not only having Eddie here, touching him, but _kissing_ him.

And it’s a good kiss. It’s the best kiss he’s ever had, and he’s had plenty over the years, mainly the sloppy, drunk kind. This is tender and warm, and when Eddie opens his mouth to let Richie’s tongue swipe against his own, he thinks he might see God or Jesus or the fucking Dalai Lama. He’s imagined this - so many times over the years. But no amount of imagination could ever come close to the reality of it, of Eddie nipping at his lower lip, of the whines caught high in the back of Eddie’s throat that Richie can hear and wants to bottle up, the perfect tune for a memory box that only he should be able to hear, because it’s his.

He’s the one doing this, he realises belatedly. He’s the one who Eddie is clutching to like a lifeline, like he wants to make them one and the same person, one fist now curled into Richie’s t-shirt. He’s the one nudging Eddie’s head to the side and eliciting those sounds, that breathlessness that follows each time they part for no longer than a few seconds.

They have to, eventually. Richie would like to go on kissing Eddie until his lungs give out on him, but Eddie doesn’t appear to be of the same mind because he pulls back, chest rising and falling unevenly with the state of his breathing. Richie thinks his might be the same, but he’s too scared to look down and check for some reason, like the obviousness of it will give him away when his heart has been put quite clearly on his sleeve now with that scorching kiss that he’ll be replaying in his mind for years to come.

“Good to see you too,” Richie breathes out like an idiot, because he’s an idiot.

Eddie seems to think so too (which is not a shock, as he calls Richie this on the daily), because he punches Richie in the bicep and then follows it up with a chop to his chest for good measure.

“I wanted to kiss your stupid handsome face,” Eddie hisses. “I came here because that’s what I wanted to do.”

“Right?” Richie says slowly. “Well. You did. Do that, I think. So…”

Rolling his eyes, Eddie looks like he’s preparing himself for something. He straightens up and pulls back his shoulders and looks Richie in the eye with an expression that Richie remembers fondly from their childhood. It’s the look Eddie gets when he’s steeling himself; when he’s about to do something bat shit crazy that surprises the fuck out of everyone but Richie.

This time, it surprises him too.

“I’ve been so fucking lost since you left New York. I was _sad_ . Not about the divorce or anything else, but because you weren’t there, and I didn’t get it, not at first, but I do now,” Eddie’s voice doesn’t waver, and Richie feels his own gaze soften at the display of strength. His strong Eddie. Always was, always will be. “I know what it all means, now. I get it. All of this - surviving Derry, meeting each other again... It’s for _this_. It’s for us.”

He’s trying to tell him something. But maybe Richie’s heart is too battered and bruised, or maybe his hopes have been dashed one too many times in the past, or maybe he just can’t run the risk of being entirely broken when he’s only just got back to his life.

Eddie gets it, he thinks. Eddie always gets it. Because he steps into Richie’s space, reaches for his hand, and says, “I love you. That’s what I’m trying to say, dumbass. I love you. And not like I love the rest - definitely not like I loved Myra. Or didn’t.” He shakes his head, a frown appearing deep in his brow. “I think we went through all that so that we could get to this.”

And it’s a fucking beautiful way of thinking about it. Richie will look back on that later, but for now he’s focusing on those three little words that he never imagined anyone would say to him and _mean_ , let alone Eddie.

He feels like he might leave his body for a moment there. It’s like he’s looking on at the scene from the outside, seeing his own shell-shocked face and the exact moment Eddie seems to experience visible regret. He needs to _say_ something, Richie realises, but he can’t seem to get his body to move, and then -

And then he fucking cries, right there in the middle of the airport, because he’s a big baby on top of being a big idiot.

“Rich?” Eddie looks horrified.

“Sorry,” Richie manages through a garbled mouthful of words. “I - what the fuck, Eds? What the fuck was that? What the fuck is this?”

“Jesus, are you actually crying?”

“No,” Richie says, rubbing roughly at the huge, salty tears on his cheeks. His throat is thick with it. “Fuck off, stop looking at me.”

The smile Eddie wears is fond, and Richie has to kiss it, so he does. He’s half expecting Eddie to recoil and push him away until he stops crying, but Eddie doesn’t do that. Eddie folds back into him and kisses him back like it’s all he’s ever wanted.

All Richie knows is that he’s never going to lose this. He lost Eddie once, and he almost lost him for good down there in the filthy sewers of Derry, and he’s not going to let anything come close to that ever again.

It slots into place in his chest. Maybe Eddie’s right. Maybe this is what it was all for. If it was, he thinks it has to be worth it. Nothing could be more worth it.

In the distance, someone catcalls. Probably at them. Richie can’t tell and doesn’t really care, but he does open his eyes at the right moment to see Eddie throwing his middle finger up in the general direction of the noise behind his back, all the while focused on kissing Richie more thoroughly than he’s ever been kissed before.

“I love you,” Richie whispers against his lips. “If you didn’t get that before. I really fucking love you.”

Eddie’s lips are crooked, like he knows something Richie doesn’t. He kisses him chastely, tangling their fingers together. 

“I know,” he says. “I know now.”

And it doesn’t matter that they’ve lost so much time, Richie thinks, because this is the better half of their lives anyway, and they get to share it together.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!
> 
> i'm over on twitter at [@decdlights](https://twitter.com/decdlights) if you wanna follow/reach out, whatever, i'm pretty active over there as i am permanently stuck here now!!


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